


In The Beginning

by Suzie_Shooter



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Developing Relationship, Friendship, Gen, Origin Story, Reunions, Self-Discovery, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 04:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suzie_Shooter/pseuds/Suzie_Shooter
Summary: The meeting on the Eastern Wall was not their first.





	In The Beginning

They'd been friends, once.

Not particularly close friends it was true, and certainly not pair-bonded like some angels were, but familiar enough with each other for casual and frequent conversation.

It had been the nature of said conversations that had begun to make Aziraphale uneasy. He liked being an angel - indeed the very concept that you might not like being an angel, or for that matter that you could be anything else, was quite literally incomprehensible to him. He found comfort in knowing he occupied his designated role, in a well-ordered universe, beneath an all-knowing and benevolent Creator.

He simply didn't understand why you would question any of it. God knew best - They had to, everything was part of the Plan, after all. You didn't have to understand it.

His friend thought differently. Not loudly, not at first, and certainly not openly, but persistently.

Aziraphale had felt guilty, later. Should he have discouraged such dissent more strongly, rather than indulging him? Should he, conversely, have encouraged him to talk about the way he felt, engaged him in debate? But such things had made him distinctly uncomfortable, and sensing this his friend had found others to talk to. Others who thought as he did, others who thought more strongly than he did, others who, ultimately, would seal his fate.

Aziraphale had fought in the first war in heaven, and had acquitted himself with stern and dispassionate justice. And if, deep down, he had prayed that he would never see a familiar face in the opposing ranks of rebel angels, perhaps his prayers were answered.

The punishment meted out to the rebels was severe, and final.

Aziraphale had mourned his friend, knowing him to be, while not dead in the technical sense, lost to him forever. And however misguided his intentions he must surely have deserved his fate, because by definition God could not be wrong.

And yet.

Aziraphale had never questioned anything before. He'd never had to for a start, his friend had always been there, the dissenting, questioning voice at his shoulder. But now he was gone, and Aziraphale found he was somehow supplying the questions in his absence. His own treacherous mind would think - why this? What for? Lord won't you explain to us just this once?

And perhaps faith was no longer blind, but it was still faith, and he accepted his posting to the Eastern Gate willingly. Getting out of Heaven for a while might be just what he needed. A nice change of scene.

He certainly couldn't have foreseen how quickly it would all go wrong.

"Well that went down like a lead balloon."

Aziraphale had certainly been aware on some level that a giant snake had been metamorphosing into the shape of a man next to him on the wall, but he'd been preoccupied with the distant figures of Adam and Eve and the diminishing flicker that marked his flaming sword, and the terrible conflicted worry of whether he'd done the right thing, and he hadn't really been paying attention until finally he turned, and he saw.

The wings, once with their hint of burnished gold were now a gleaming black, and the eyes were those of a snake, but the face was familiar enough that something stuttered inside him.

"Sorry, what was that?" he managed, emotions crashing together inside him too loudly to come up with anything more than a verbal placeholder.

"I said, well that went down like a lead balloon."

Aziraphale reflected later with a faint note of surprise that of all the things he'd felt in that moment, there hadn't been a single shred of fear. This was a demon, a creature of the pit, here in the Garden where such a thing shouldn't even have been possible. He should have been afraid. He should have been angry.

Mostly, what he felt was awkward.

This was tempered by a wave of relief, that washed in on two levels. Firstly, that after so long, and having been on different sides, his erstwhile friend didn't seem to hold any of it against him and had just picked up a conversation in the middle, as if they'd never stopped having them in the first place. Secondly, Aziraphale had been fretting for some time now over what he'd just done, and here was someone he could lay his anxieties out for and get a second opinion.

Beside him, the demon had continued musing on recent events.

"I don't see what's so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway?"

"Well it must be bad...?" Aziraphale hoped fervently he would pick up on the unspoken social cue. They had been forbidden to speak the names of any of the Fallen but it wasn't fear of disobeying Heaven that stopped the old name on the tip of his tongue, it was fear of causing offence. Demons, he knew, had adopted new names, and he didn't wish to use one that was perhaps no longer welcome.

"Crawley."

"Crawley," Aziraphale echoed gratefully.

 _How are you?_ he wanted to say. Instead, he heard himself defending Heaven once more against Crawley's familiar protests and winced inwardly, afraid of breaking this tentative truce before it had really begun.

 _What's it like?_ he wanted to say. But - how could it be anything but bad? How could a question like that ever be welcomed?

 _I missed you,_ he wanted to say. Instead, as the first drops of the first rain began to fall and Crawley edged nervously closer, perhaps wary of what new punishment from Heaven this might be, he silently extended the protective shelter of his wing.

And an angel and a demon, neither of whom were perhaps entirely who they once were, stood on the wall above the garden and faced the oncoming storm.


End file.
